Previews: Veteran Rewards

Introduced with the "Issue 8: To Protect and Serve" expansion to City of Heroes and City of Villains, Cryptic Studios will be implementing a Veteran Award system that rewards players based on how long they've had an activated account for the duo of games. These rewards range from costume pieces to special powers to extra base items, including a lot of novelty items that City of Heroes and Villains fans have been anticipating since the opening of the game.

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That's right, we're talking wings.

As stated above, the Veteran Awards are based on how long you have had an activated account. These rewards are cumulative; for example, players who have had an active City of Heroes/Villains account for three months will receive a "Trustworthy" badge, access to Trench coats in the costume shop, and one token for a free costume makeover. Players who have had an active account for six months will also receive a "Faithful" badge, access to Greek alphabet chest emblems in the costume shop, another free costume makeover, and the three months rewards.

Players will receive other rewards besides the cosmetic rewards. At nine months, players receive a token that allows them one free respec of their skills. Due to City of Villain's superpower trees, players can make mistakes while leveling up and picking their new powers that can only be fixed with respecs. Respecs are granted at the end of specific, difficult taskforces or sometimes when a new expansion is released. The addition of Veteran respecs will allow players another chance to switch builds without waiting for new expansions.

At the one year milestone, players receive their first Veteran power - a choice between Ghost Slaying Axe or Sands of Mu. These are permanent powers granted to the player, which do a good amount of damage with a fairly decent recharge time. At the one year mark players also receive access to the preorder skills, special sprint powers that improve player runspeeds, even if they did not preorder originally. Lastly at the one year milestone, players will receive the first of their base item rewards. These rewards are special cosmetic items that players can place in their base, such as the twelve-month weapon display cases containing enemy weaponry.

The costume rewards are common to all characters, while the free makeovers, free respecs, prestige powers, etc are redeemable through the badges window.

These rewards are escalating, and as displayed above, cater to both hardcore players looking for improvements to gameplay (powers, respecs) as well as the more casual group that enjoys costumes and base design. Some of the later cool rewards include the fifteen month wings reward, with a choice between angel wings and demon wings, the two year reward of an immediate emergency base teleporter skill, to get you out of those sticky situations, and the three year base item reward Archanos Flyer or Longbow Chaser (yes, the jets!).

This progression seems fair, allowing players fairly early access to wings, one of the most requested costume additions to the game (and yes, they are animated with flying and falling), while rewarding long-time subscribers with unexpected, awesome additions.

For now, buying months in advance will not earn you more Veteran reward time, but the system will be retroactive - i.e., if you've been playing for a year when Issue 8 releases, you will have access to the one year rewards. If your account was cancelled for two of those months, you will only have access to the 9 months reward - in short, the system only counts active account time.